Petition demanding new Brexit referendum at 3 million, growing

A petition calling for a second Brexit referendum continues to circulate in the U.K. and has now topped 3 million signatures. It needs but 100,000 for it to be put upon the docket to be discussed in Parliament but will it mean much of anything?

Brexit again campaign

It does not seem it will. Politicians would be loathe to plunge the U.K. back into turmoil by awarding another vote to the Remain side, and the victorious Leave side would not take such a decision well. They'd be justified in arguing such votes would be meaningless if the government could simply do the whole thing over and over until they got the result they wanted.

Professor John Curtice from the University of Strathclyde, a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland and an expert on elections, told the Press Association yesterday the petition is a case of too little, too late.

"It's no good people signing the petition now, they should have done it before," he said. "Even then, these petitions don't always mean a great deal. It has passed the 100,000 mark for it to be debated in Parliament. All that means is that some MPs will say, ‘It's a terrible shame’, others will say, ‘Hallelujah’. Then that's the end of it."

The fallout from the result now under discussion includes the possibility of the U.K. breaking-up. Scotland, which supported Remain in large numbers, is already planning another leave the U.K. vote and a poll says that this time 59 percent of the population say they will vote for Independence. Northern Ireland also strong supported the Remain side.

Origins of petition

It's been discovered the petition to seek another vote on Brexit was started by a supporter of the Leave side. The Guardian reports "it has emerged the petition was started by William Oliver Healey, an English Democrats activist and Leave campaigner, who was concerned the Remain camp would win."

Healey began the petition as a fallback position in the event his side lost. He then felt that if the results were under 60 percent for the winning side and the turnout was under 75 percent (the result was 52 to 48 for Leave; turnout just 72 percent) then the referendum should be invalid.

Healey's position now that his side has won but under the very conditions he was prepared to object to had they lost? In a posting on Facebook he said that his petition was "hijacked" and that the election result was "the will of the British people."